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What we mean when we talk about “addiction” – part 1

addiction

Getting clarity about an important – and often misunderstood – issue

What is addiction? In the church, in counseling, and even in the field of recovery, this deceptively simple question gets really confusing really fast.

Susan Cheever, in her wonderful book Desire, has this to say about the challenge of getting clarity about addiction:

“For all the definitions that have been written by the hundreds of addiction specialists and doctors, addiction is still mysterious and baffling. In many cases it’s hard to tell if someone is an addict or just a passionate amateur.”

In order to overcome addiction, we need to have a clear understanding of what it is, exactly. How is a doctor supposed to treat people for illness if she doesn’t know what these illnesses look like?

We dismiss it because we don’t understand it

Related to the confusion about what addiction is — and maybe in part because of that confusion — some people are dismissive of the concept itself. I’ve heard people complain that it’s a modern invention, compared to the (idealized) past, where people seemed to just “deal with” their problems. “If someone drank too much, they just stopped” (did that ever really work?).

(more…)

 
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The role of your spouse in recovery from sexual addiction

bigstock_Thoughtful_Woman_386151If you are married, your spouse can help or hinder your recovery, but they can’t make or break it. They can make your recovery easier or harder … but no matter how helpful they are, you still have to do the work yourself. Conversely, no matter how difficult, dysfunctional, or stuck in anger your spouse is, you can still move toward health and recovery … if you really want to.

You can’t move forward in your recovery if you’re holding your spouse responsible for it. Some sexual strugglers think their problem would be solved if only their spouse was more sexually available or responsive. Others think their recovery is on hold because their spouse is angry about their sexual behavior and isn’t supportive enough of the efforts they’re making in recovery.

The list of ways that addicts turn the keys of their recovery over to their spouses is endless … and sad. It’s time to take the keys back, and keep the responsibility for recovery on our own shoulders.

In other posts on this website, we have made the point that the first step in the 12 Steps is to recognize our powerlessness over our addictive behavior … that we can’t control our sexual compulsion without outside help. But let’s be clear: that outside help (more…)

 
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TED Talk Highlights Brain Changes that Stem from Porn

THE BAD NEWS: Porn alters the brain in ways that inhibit arousal and detract from “in person” sex, creating an epidemic of erectile dysfunction

THE GOOD NEWS: When you stop porn use, your brain can (over time) heal itself

Check out this fascinating TEDx lecture by Gary Wilson. It’s well put together, and really needs no introduction.

Be forewarned: some people who read this site are easily triggered to sexual temptation, and very sensitive to the materials I put on here. So know that there is a brief picture of women in bikinis at one point in the lecture.

But I hope that won’t keep you from watching. It’s very thought-provoking, and I hope that every person who has access to the internet watches this video.

 

Let me know what you think in the comments. :-)

 
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Recovery Fail: Five stupid things people do to mess up their recovery

Here is the recording of a Teleseminar I did some time ago about the ways people sabotage their recovery.

I am getting ready to do another teleseminar with my wife Charlene in March … I hope you can join us for that. This recording should give you an example of what these teleseminars are like.

By the way, this teleseminar lasts 60 minutes. You can click on the link and it will open up a player, or you can right click and do a “save as …” and listen to it later.

Recovery Fail Teleseminar

 
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Free Teleseminar: Dealing with Dysfunctional Relationships … The 90/10 Transition

What can you do in a relationship that’s not working, but it seems like the other person is not willing to change?

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Event: Free Teleseminar Training

Date: Thursday, March 7

Time: 7:00pm Central Time

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Dealing with Dysfunctional Relationships … The 90/10 Transition is a free teleseminar, and the focus will be on how to deal with an intimate relationship that is not working. The leaders of this training event will be Mark Brouwer and Charlene Brouwer, who lead recovery workshops and groups, as well as doing individual and couples counseling and coaching.

“If couples come to us and they both acknowledge things aren’t going well, and they’re both ready to admit their failings, and they’re both willing to make changes, then counseling is powerful and changes happen really quickly. But that pretty much never happens. Instead it’s usually one person wants to make things work, and the other person is unwilling or unable to make changes. Sometimes the problem is that one partner is struggling with addiction … and their spouse wonders how to deal with that. What can you do if you are wanting to make overcome dysfunction in a relationship, but your partner doesn’t see it, and/or won’t do anything to change?”  – Mark Brouwer

This free telephone seminar will include a written action guide, and teaching by Mark and Charlene, based on their experiences working with couples overcoming addiction, and couples dealing with other challenges. There will also be time for your questions and answers.

Registration is free, and all registered participants will receive a recording of this training event.

Sign up using the form below … and note that you’ll need to confirm your participation by responding to a verification email.

 
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Letting Go: How Far Do I Take This Approach to Life?

I know that the problem for many of us — which leads to stress and pain and ultimately to dysfunctional relationships and/or addiction — is this: we get too wrapped up in our expectations and desires for our lives and other people. Everywhere we look there are problems to fix. Everyone in our lives has something we want them to change. We vacillate between trying crazy hard to control and change, and then swing over to passivity and disengagement.

It seems like the more we try to change things, the more resistance we get, and the more disappointment we feel.

What would it be like to just accept other people the way they are? What would it be like to accept my life as it is? Could I do this? Should I do this? Doesn’t it seem like we’re giving up “the fight” then (as in, fighting for what’s right, fighting for our marriage, fighting for purity, etc., etc.)?

I don’t know. I do know that some point we have ask ourselves: What is all this fighting getting us? How well are the people in our lives responding to our suggestions and encouragement to improve?

I ran across a paragraph from Byron Katie that got me thinking. I’m not sure I completely agree with it, because it seems so extreme. But it sure has me thinking. Somehow there is a curious co-mingling of acceptance and change. Somehow these two things seem to go together: accepting my life and myself and others around me just as they are … and moving towards something more healthy and God-honoring. Listen to how Katie puts it:

I don’t know what’s best for me or you or the world. I don’t try to impose my will on you or anyone else. I don’t want to change you or improve you or convert you or help you or heal you. I just welcome things as they come and go. That’s true love. The best way of leading people is to let them find their own way.

What do you think?

 
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What lab experiments can tell us about the cause and cure for addiction

Most people are familiar with the drug experiments that use rats to demonstrate how addictive certain drugs are. Rats are hooked up to monitors and given the opportunity to choose regular water or water laced with drugs. In the experiments, rats choose the drugs, and this is used to show how addictive drugs are. In fact, some rats will kill themselves because they take drugs instead of eating or drinking.

Bruce Alexander is an addiction researcher from Canada who took these tests further. In what has become known as the “Rat Park” experiment, he and other researchers showed that the environment rats are in while they’re being tested completely changes rats’ propensity to use drugs.

The Skinner Box

Rat in a Skinner Box

Alexander noted that rats like to run around, play with other rats, hide under shelters, and make baby rats. But in the drug research at that time, none of this was possible. Rats were isolated in hellish contraptions known as “Skinner Boxes” (individual cages that allow researchers to hook up sensors to the rat’s body, thus reducing the rat’s ability to move around).

The Rat Park research was based on this question: “What if all the traditional drug/rat experiments show is that when rats are isolated, and live in horrible environments, they will tend to use drugs?” In other words: what would happen if you put rats in a more natural, non-isolated environment? Would that affect their propensity for addiction?

The researchers built a 95 square foot environment to house a group of 20 rats (both sexes). They equipped this environment with wheels for the rats to run, shelters to hide in, and space to move around in. This place was so nice for the rats that it was given the name “the Rat Park.”

One section of the Rat Park


What Happened

Guess what happened? In the rat park, rats were given the choice between plain tap water and water laced with morphine. To the surprise of many, in this new natural environment, most of the rats chose the plain water! Alexander wrote, “Nothing that we tried produced anything that looked like addiction in rats that were housed in a reasonably normal environment.” Even more amazing, rats that were previously addicted to morphine slowly weaned themselves off the drug when placed in the Rat Park. You can read more about these experiments here and here.

For a variety of reasons, Alexander’s work has not gotten the widespread attention that it deserves. Even though he was able to replicate the results of his study, Alexander says his research was “dropped like a stone” in the addiction community. He and his colleagues, who were all just starting out in their careers, moved on to other pursuits. Part of the problem may have been timing: The Rat Park experiments were published in the early 1980s, just as the war on drugs — with its “just say no” and “this is your brain on drugs” PR campaign — was taking hold.

What It Means

I believe that what Alexander and his fellow researchers demonstrated has profound implications for how we understand addiction and how we go about treating it. I have come to believe that careful attention to one’s emotional and spiritual well-being is THE central task of recovery. Our relational, emotional, and spiritual “environment” will make or break our recovery.

Let me put it another way: If your life sucks, it’s really hard to stay sober. You can do it, but it’s really hard, and it’s hard to sustain. It takes a huge effort, laser focus, and lots of time. The fact is, this is how recovery starts for most people. They enter into recovery because their lives suck — their lives are spinning out of control and they are depressed … that’s why they keep turning to their addictive behavior.

So in early recovery we start out from a place of spiritual and emotional ill-health — and in order to get and stay sober, we’ve got to do “whatever it takes.” People often need to take extreme measures: (more…)

 
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The Key to Overcoming Hurts in Recovery … and Maybe it’s not Forgiveness

When people have hurts and struggles in relationships, they tend to work on resolving them by focusing on forgiveness. There’s nothing wrong with forgiveness, but sometimes it’s hard to get there.

Maybe we should be talking more about compassion instead. Let me explain.

We all know that we’re supposed to forgive people who hurt us, but we get hung up on what it means and how to do it. We struggle to make sense of the jumble of emotions we still feel, even after we’ve made that seemingly momentous decision to forgive. The focus of forgiveness is often on what amounts to quasi-legal/moral decision – to pardon someone, or “let them off the hook.” Then we often struggle to sort out what happens internally after we make that “decision to forgive.”

A Different Way

I want to suggest a different approach. If you’re struggling to let go of some hurt, forget about forgiveness for now, and instead just focus on compassion.

Webster’s defines compassion as: “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” Compassion is what happens when (more…)

 
 
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